[FOM] philosophical literature on intuitionism

Richard Zach rzach at ucalgary.ca
Tue Oct 14 13:13:03 EDT 2008


Mark van Atten is the go-to guy for this sort of question, and I'm sure
he'll respond soon with something more focussed.  Off the top of my
head, here are some places to start:

- There's a whole section on intuitionism with many if not all the
important original papers in Mancosu's "From Brouwer to Hilbert"
collection, with an introduction by van Stigt.

- van Atten, "On Brouwer" in the Wadsworth Philosophers Series. (The
series is a bit hit-and-miss, but Mark's book is a hit.)

- van Atten's SEP entry on the history of intuitionistic logic
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/intuitionistic-logic-development/
(Also got lots of references.)

In depth:

- van Stigt, W., 1990, Brouwer's Intuitionism, Amsterdam: North-Holland.

- Hesseling, D., 2003, Gnomes in the Fog. The Reception of Brouwer's
Intuitionism in the 1920s, Basel: Birkhäuser.

Best,
R

On Mon, 2008-10-13 at 23:27 +0100, Thomas Forster wrote:
> I'm curious to know what the people who dreamt this stuff up actually 
> thought they were doing.
> 
> Where is the best place to start?  Is it Dummett's book? Did Brouwer write
> anything one might want to read? I seem to remember there is an essay in
> one of the collections (Benacerraf and Putnam?).  One of my colleagues
> here says that Intuitionism is really a form of solipsism, and that for an
> intuitionist to countenance any kind of interpretation into classical
> logic (or vice versa) is to undermine the solipsism and would not be
> welcomed by the true believers.  I do remember reading that Brouwer was
> hostile to attempts to axiomatise constructive logic..
> 
>  Any useful steers?
> 
>  -- 
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